7 Bullet Points About Languages - Week 12
Hi everybody,
I hope your study of your language(s?) is still going strong!
Each week, I share 7 things that could be useful to your learning odyssey. I hope they can help you improve your journey, tickle your curiosity, and inspire you to keep exploring.
Let's dive right in!
One video: I changed my mind about language methods — By Lindie Botes
This video from Lindie was quite interesting and showed how her own learning method changed with time. For example, she used to rely on flashcards to learn vocabulary but stopped doing it. I loved that she opened one of her notebooks to show how she's been doing and making it clearer for her audience.
One article I read: Learning Languages from the Same Language Families: Pros and Cons — By Luca Lampariello
I loved this article. Having learned languages that are either similar (Korean and Japanese) or straight-up from the same language family (French and Spanish), I have experienced both the positive and negative aspects Luca mentioned. I can attest the negative ones disappear, as he explains as well. And I can definitely confirm learning similar languages without first increasing one to a higher level is dangerous. At best.
One article I wrote: 5 Different Types of YouTube Videos to Improve Your Language
I'm addicted to YouTube so I've chosen to use my addiction as a positive for my language-learning endeavors. In this article, I don't share many specific channels (although I do mention a few), but I talk especially about the kinds of channels that could serve you well on your own journey.
One podcast episode: Language Hacking Podcast Episode 041 | Benny Lewis on How Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro is Like Learning Languages
I found this episode was extremely interesting. I loved the comparisons Benny and Elizabeth did throughout the podcast. Here, Benny explains the challenges he had climbing while being out of shape. What really stuck with me was his reflection on finding reasons for his setback when he was about to give up climbing. He asked himself "Is there another reason why I'm reaching this setback?". This is a question that can be worth asking whenever you begin stagnating. Maybe you can't change the most obvious reason you find, but you can change something else in order to keep learning.
One tool to try: Tweetdeck
I love this website to practice reading languages. I've set it to have columns of different languages next to each other, which allows me to switch back and forth, thus getting used to doing it for future occasions when I'll need to switch. I can also get an overview of different specific accounts of hashtags that interest me, thus getting more focused vocabulary.
One quote: "Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things." — Flora Lewis.
One challenge for the week ahead: Journal in the language for a week
Journaling is a great habit to have overall. Journaling in a language you're learning is even better. I did it for over two years, switching every now and then the language I wrote it in. Nowadays, I only write the three things I'm grateful for in Korean. So for this week, let's try to write a few sentences every morning or evening about our lives. At the end of the week, you could copy all your entries on Journaly and get corrections for them.
Last week's challenge was to focus on listening to one person while having many other people talk in the background. I first tried focusing on one Korean video while having 3 other (2 conversations and one monologue) in Korean and Japanese. It was harder than I thought to set-up, but by tweaking the audio volume of others I was able to imitate a loud bar. It was mentally tiring but not too hard either.
I then tried focusing on a Japanese monologue while having a French monologue, an English one, a Korean one, and some light music. As I understand all these languages, it was even harder but I was able to follow most of what was said in the Japanese video. I think this was a great practice to really focus on one person, and may even be useful to get ready to go back to restaurants and bars!
Let me know how it went for you by sending me a mail at barra.mathias(at)gmail.com !
As always, thanks for reading!
Mathias Barra
For more of my articles, you can find them here.